


Inadvertent

by loveandallthat



Series: Interesting [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandallthat/pseuds/loveandallthat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric and Kent run into each other at Jack's game and get to talking. It goes about as well as expected, until they exchange numbers. Then it gets complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks in the world to my good friend Jess, who beta read this for me even though she's not even in this fandom. This work is a thousand times better because of her. Basically, for my own birthday, I'm adding to the Bitty and Parse stories on here. 
> 
> I do not own these characters.

Jack's team had lost to the Aces, 4-1.

This wasn't necessarily news, and it wasn't that it had to be considered a surprise, either--the Aces were currently number one in the league, but Eric inevitably wanted good things to happen to Jack Zimmermann.

And maybe, he wanted less-than-great things to happen to Kent Parson. Just a little bit. A hat trick wasn't exactly what he had in mind.

Which is what made it all the more awkward when Bitty had taken Jack's advice on where to wait for him after the game, a place where fans and press were unlikely to be buzzing around. And, to his chagrin, who should show up but the NHL's leading scorer himself, captain of the Aces, Kent Parson.

Of course he would know where to wait for Jack, and of course he would want to talk to him. For goodness sake, he had certainly gone out of his way to see Jack at the Haus last year on Epikegster, so when they're actually in the same place, what should Bitty expect? And yet the only way Parse had even entered his mind up until this point had been as a possible stumbling block for Jack--during the game. After the game he had figured that the threat would be over.

But as Eric sat at the edge of a row of chairs in a non-main hallway, refreshing Twitter on his phone and shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he was proven wrong. Honestly, he felt awkward enough even being here; Jack had gotten enough tickets for four members of the Samwell team, which was bad enough when he gave them all to Eric and told him to decide, ending up with Chowder and Nursey and Dex tagging along. But of course, of course they all insisted that they were so busy that they had to get back to campus immediately (and maybe they were all in the same class, and maybe that class did have a midterm, but still.) Being alone here seemed like the worst possible option, until Eric heard footsteps and looked up and found himself eye to eye with Kent Parson.

"Oh," is what Kent decided to say, and Eric tried to remind himself that what he had heard from Jack's bedroom that day wasn't all there was to Kent. Shitty had called him humble and mentioned that Jack had treated him somewhat poorly after the Aces had won the cup. But Eric couldn't get the image of Jack literally shaking for the brief moment between when Kent had left and when Jack had slammed his door shut out of his head.

"Oh," Eric repeated, at a loss.

Kent studied him for a moment, and the somewhat Jack-related setting must have sparked something in his memory. "You're the kid Jack was talking to at that party last year."

"Eric Bittle," he replied.

"Kent Parson," Kent introduced himself, unnecessarily.

"Yeah, I--um. I know. I asked you for a picture?"

"Oh, right, and started the whole line of people," Kent accused, though he was smiling. "So you're a fan?"

Eric shrugged. He wasn't really, but a celebrity was a celebrity. Kent laughed.

"You're waiting for Jack, then? He tell you about this place?"

"Yeah," Eric answered. "Is that what you're doing here?"

"I thought we might catch up, yeah." Kent's tone was dismissive, but it set something off in Bitty. Someone with the effect on Jack that Parse had shouldn't be allowed to just show up places he might be and catch him off guard.

"Even though Jack told you to get away from him and his team, you mean?" Eric asked.

"Fuck, you really were eavesdropping," Kent said, some of the humor leaving his face. Eric shrugged again because, yeah, he kind of was. It had been at least mostly unintentional, though. "Look, not that it's any of your god damn business, but we were pretty good friends once, OK? So sorry if I'm not going to just give up."

Unfortunately, a big part of Eric respected that. It was good that someone in Jack's life wanted to fight for him like this. And it wasn't like he knew the full story, anyway, because it really wasn't any of his business. "Jack did say it was complicated," Eric replied, hopefully not giving too much away.

"You mean he actually talked to you about it, after? Maybe college is doing something good for that loser," he teased, but fondly. Apparently taking something in Eric's expression as permission, he sat in the seat immediately next to him, dropping a bag across the two seats on his other side.

"So how'd you get away so early?" Eric asked after a minute. Small talk felt like giving up, but maybe that was the appropriate response to the situation. Leaving certainly wasn’t, since that would mean instead of Jack finding Eric and Kent while expecting Eric, he would be finding only Kent when expecting Eric.

"It's not as interesting to talk to the winner," Kent explained. "There's less for me to say, anyway. No talk of plans to do better next time, just congratulating myself and my team."

He really sounded like he meant it, and not like he was bragging about the fact that he had won, or done so well, but Eric felt like testing him.

"You played really well," he conceded begrudgingly. It was incredibly true, which may have been the worst part.

Kent's face brightened. "You think so? Thanks."

"Of course I--whatever," Eric grumbled. All at once he became aware of the fact that Kent Parson was incredibly famous, good-looking, smart, talented and, apparently, possessed of an ability to act charmingly . . . normal.

"You and Jack are really good friends, aren't you?" Kent asked quietly.

"Mhm," Eric affirmed. "We are now, but we weren't always. Why? Because he got me tickets to the game?"

"Nah, getting people tickets is so fucking easy it may as well mean nothing. Because you got him to join a party, because he wanted to take a picture with you, because he talked to you about something possibly not-so-great that happened to him."

"And you're referring to yourself as that something?" Eric asked.

"I hope not," Kent muttered vaguely.

Eric looked at his face searchingly. There was a tiredness around his eyes that would probably be hard to notice if he weren't so close. He wondered if it was his general lifestyle, an after-game thing, or if this had something to do with Jack or his conversation. Eric sighed noticeably and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a granola bar he'd brought for Jack--one of his favorites, in fact. He held it out to the side silently.

Kent laughed. "Zimms used to eat these all the time," he said. "Thanks." He opened it, then paused. "Want half?"

The offer might have been dampened by the fact that Eric had been the one to bring it in the first place, but it was still kind of a nice gesture. He shook his head, and watched with amusement as Kent finished it off quickly. He had brought Jack two, just in case they got to talking or ended up waiting a while to get a chance to eat. He left the other one in his pocket, thinking that Jack wouldn't know the difference anyway, which left him feeling even guiltier.

"Ordinarily I might have baked something, but they tend to frown on bringing baked goods to professional hockey games," Eric said offhandedly, not really expecting Kent to still be paying any attention.

"Wait, you bake? That's interesting." He seemed put off, but then he continued. "What would you bake for a hockey game anyway?"

"Oh, believe me, I could figure it out," Eric answered confidently.  Mini-quiches?

"Huh," Kent breathed, looking at him through narrowed eyes. He stared for a while before he looked away, but Bitty kept eye contact the whole time. Then Kent seemed to deflate.

"I'm really not trying to piss him off," he stressed. "Zimms," he clarified, as though he needed to. "Jack. I know seeing me reminds him of a lot of shit he'd rather not talk about, but a lot of it happened to me, too, and I still want to . . . whatever, be his friend. Obviously I'm jealous of you."

What. That was about the least obvious thing Bitty could imagine. He collected himself, though.

"I believe you," he admitted, quietly. "But I don't want to let anybody hurt Jack." Kent's scrutinizing look was back again, seemingly out of place with the slouchy clothes and the backwards cap he had clearly put on after his shower. What was visible of his hair was already drying messily.

"Oh," Kent said. "You like him."

Eric could feel his face heat up. "He's my friend."

Kent didn't stop teasing. "Right," he agreed. "Your friend you're into."

Pressing his face into his hands, Bitty groaned. "Is it that obvious?" he admitted. This was a terrible idea. To be fair, Kent didn't know why it was a terrible idea, didn't know that Jack already knew.

"Whoa," Kent said, breaking him out of his thoughts. "Chill. I'm not gonna say anything. None of my fucking business. Just, like, don't think you have no chance? Or whatever. Not that you were thinking that. I mean, someone should . . . no, never mind."

"That clears up absolutely nothing," Eric replied. Besides, thinking that he didn't have a chance wasn't the problem at all.

"I know. Look, you're friends with Jack, so if there's anything he wants to talk to you about, he's going to have to do it himself. I'm not getting in the middle of this."

Eric was relieved to know that Jack and Kent weren't going to be talking about this any time soon, even if he didn't understand what else was going on. He did become increasingly suspicious of their time in Jack’s bedroom, but he wasn't about to jump to any crazy conclusions.

He allowed himself to look again, really look at Kent. Kent kept glancing out of the corner of his eye, but mostly kept his gaze directed at his feet, allowing his overt staring.

Eric bit his lip, but couldn't quite keep his next words in. "You seem like . . . a pretty good guy," he declared slowly, regretting each word as it escaped his mouth. "You said some pretty shitty things to Jack, though. About his team, too. But right now I almost want to like you."

Kent looked up at that, eyes wide, and paused for a long time before saying anything.

"Yeah, shit, look. This is going to sound pretty fucking terrible, but right now? I have everything that Zimms wanted when we were younger. What both of us wanted . . . And yeah, I know, poor me, but it's not like I'm having the time of my life doing this alone, you know? I just want to bring him along. And I'm high enough up that I can literally just--do that. Get him signed straight to my team, no problem. I know he only joined that team to give himself another chance at the pros." Those words hurt, undeniably. "And yeah, I see now he's still friends with you guys, so he probably got more out of it than he planned, but when I knew his plan? Yeah, I thought that he needed to get out as quickly as possible and go where he belonged."

As much as he wanted to, Bitty was having trouble arguing with that. "You still could have been nicer about it."

"You think I don't fucking know that? He kicked me out, for--" Kent took a deep breath, fell silent for a beat. ". . . He wanted this," he whispered.

"He has something else now," Eric pointed out. Someone else, he didn't say, because it wasn't true in the way it sounded.

"Yeah, and I'm glad, really. Maybe--maybe that's what I'll tell him, if he ever gets his ass out here."

"He is kind of taking a long time," Eric agreed. He pulled out his phone to see if he had any texts, which he didn't.

"Come on," Kent exclaimed suddenly.

"What?" Eric asked, confused.

"Come on," he repeated, more forcefully, suddenly standing up and sticking out his hand. Eric took it uncertainly, allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. He tried to let go at that point, but Kent was already dragging him along. "Nobody's going to be hanging out by the locker room at this point; they'll definitely let me in," he added confidently.

"Oh, this is not going to be a good idea," Eric muttered to himself, and then quietly, "Jack." Because the hallway that they were in was the only way to get to where they had been sitting, and of course that was the way Jack would have come, as well. And there he was.

"Bitty," he replied, uncertain.

"Zimms," Kent said, letting go of Eric.

"Parse," Jack responded tonelessly. "Nobody saw you leave."

"Right," he answered. "I didn't."

"Obviously."

Jack turned away. "Are we still going to dinner, Bitty? I still have a reservation at that restaurant you wanted to try." He was being even quieter than usual.

"Yes," Eric replied immediately. Because of course they were.

"Can we talk first?" Kent asked Jack, and he really seemed unsure of himself in that moment.

"I can wait, if you want," Eric murmured. He tried not to let Kent hear him say that, or at least not to let Jack think that Kent had heard him; he didn't want to guilt Jack into doing anything he didn't want to do.

"We're already late," Jack replied, so apparently that was not a problem. He walked away and Eric followed automatically.

"Wait," Eric said, "I think I left something." He ran back before Jack could have a chance to offer to come with him, and found Kent back at the chairs, head in his hands. He stuck his hand on Kent's shoulder, thinking again that it was weird to be around someone this famous (besides Jack) and keeping his hand in place even when Kent startled.

"Give me your phone," he demanded. Kent looked even more exhausted than he had earlier, and he seemed to automatically comply. Eric put in his own name and number, not letting himself think about it too much. "Just in case of . . . whatever," he said unhelpfully. It wasn't in case of emergency, obviously. But leaving without doing anything else seemed like a douche move, so here Bitty was, giving his phone number to the leading scorer in the NHL.

Kent stared at his phone when it was given back to him and then looked up. "Yeah," he agreed, "whatever."

Later that night, when Eric felt his phone vibrate in his pocket at dinner, he let himself wonder. Sure there was every chance that it was just a notification, something from Twitter or Youtube or the Samwell group text, but now he knew there was another possibility.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack takes Eric to a post-game dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to my amazing beta reader and lovely friend Jessica, who puts up with a lot of awkwardly worded sentences, and characters she doesn't know.

Eric's phone chimed a few more times before he checked; it was the Samwell group text. Nobody had really been removed from it, even when they'd graduated, so everyone was using it to mention all the good moves Jack had during the game--and there were quite a few.  His team may have lost, but Jack had played impressively.

He noticed that the frogs--no, not frogs, not anymore--had joined in, apparently not as concerned with studying as they had claimed.  Eric put his phone back into his pocket without joining in and looked up at Jack.

"Everyone is talking about how well you played," Eric offered, knowing that Jack wasn't likely to check his phone any time soon.  Jack nodded to acknowledge that he'd heard.

"Still hungry?" Eric offered, sure that the granola bar on the drive over wouldn't have been enough.  Maybe two would have been, but that ship had sailed.

"Definitely," Jack agreed, jumping onto the new topic easily.  "But you pick.  Everything."

"Oh, gosh."  Eric was already panicking.  How hungry was Jack, really?  Should he get an appetizer, even though the meals came with soup and salad?  Two appetizers?

"Bitty," Jack interrupted, "seriously, anything."

Jack was probably going to be paying, so if he ordered too much it would seem like he was taking advantage. But if he ordered too little, and Jack was still hungry, it would be like he was forcing Jack not to eat enough food.  Plus, he was a hockey player and needed to recharge the right way nutritionally, so . . .

Jack put his hand on Bitty's wrist for a second.  "Bitty."

"Right," he agreed, because the waiter was ready to take their order.  Considering the upscale nature of the restaurant, it was surprising that a few of the waitstaff were standing around, looking disappointed when one approached them first.

The waiter spoke up.  "Hello, I'm Steve, and I'll be taking care of you today.  Would you like to hear the specials?"  Eric's plan for what to order could be thrown out completely, but he still said yes and listened.  "I'm sorry," Steve apologized, strung together with the specials list, "Mr. Zimmermann, I'm a huge fan of you, and your father.  I don't mean to be unprofessional."

"Not at all," Jack dismissed, "Thank you for your support."

Steve seemed a little more at ease after that, as he turned to Jack to ask for his order, but Jack just gestured to Eric.

Eric ordered two appetizers, and then looked at Jack for a second before ordering their entrees as well.  Jack smiled, and the waiter looked pretty surprised by what was happening.

"Anything to drink?" he hazarded, side-eyeing Eric as he indicated to the wine list.

Jack took charge again, denying the offer on both of their behalf, and Eric may have been projecting but he thought that the waiter, Steve, was more comfortable with that.  Like Jack had to be the one who was making the decisions.  OK, yes, Eric was probably projecting.

The waiter finally left, which was just fine with Eric, although he didn't want to be rude.  He wasn't about to criticize someone for being a fan of Jack, even if he had unnecessarily brought up Bad Bob in the same context.

"This is a really nice place," Eric commented, which was true.  Jack smiled like he knew how awkward Eric felt after that interaction.

"Thanks for coming," he replied, softly.  Eric had to smile.

"Don't be silly.  I wanted to come.  And the other boys were so excited about the seats."

"I'm glad."

"So," Eric started awkwardly, and then cleared his throat.  "How are you . . . adjusting?"

"Things are good," Jack answered.  "Really.  I'm fitting in pretty well with the team; they don't bother me about anything.  You know.  And living at the Haus was great, but I can't say I mind having my own space.  I'm sure you can imagine."

"Maybe I would hate not having anyone to bake for," Eric pointed out.

"You'd have neighbors and friends still, obviously.  You could move anywhere and have friends in a week."

"Well, thanks for thinking that.  I seem to remember a time when you might not have said that."

"Oh, I still would have said that when I first met you, if I had been paying any attention to anyone but myself."  To be fair, Jack had been especially self-involved at the time, but not without reason.

"Mhm, 'if' being the key word in that sentence," Eric teased.

Jack got a suddenly solemn look on his face.  "Speaking of getting along with anybody," here we go, Eric thought, "What were you and Ken--Parse talking about?"

Eric wasn't sure why Jack was still censoring any part of his past or current closeness with Kent, but he just took a deep breath and tried to think about how to word it.  "Obviously he was there waiting for you.  We didn't--we weren't talking about you, exactly, except that you were the reason both of us were there."  Oh, shit, was he lying?  This felt almost like lying.  "Kent told me that he wasn't going to talk about your history with me, because you should be the only one to tell me those kinds of things.  Not that I asked!"  Should he have called him 'Parse' too?  Eric's fingers itched to check his phone.

"So you were talking about all the other things you have in common," Jack joked, apparently having been calmed by Eric's answer.

"Of course.  Like fame, and money."  And good looks, Eric didn't add.

"Famous people don't sit around and talk about fame," Jack defended, as the appetizers arrived, and Eric started putting most of them on Jack's plate and only a few on his own.  "Although I can't really argue with rich people and money."

Eric laughed.  "I think everyone talks about money, though.  Isn't it what most married people fight about?"

"I might have read that somewhere."

"Well, if it's on the internet, it must be true," Eric quoted.  He touched his phone in his pocket, but pulled out his empty hand to keep eating instead.

"You're dying to be on Twitter right now, aren't you?"

"No!  Of course not.  I want to be here, talking to you."

"You can take your phone out for a second.  Check the group chat, see if anyone has posted anything interesting."

People probably had; his phone had been going off like crazy.  "I don't want to," he insisted.  Jack looked at him, completely disbelieving, but let it go when distracted by the next course.

Jack didn't have much more to say regarding his new life, so Eric started talking about his new classes, baking adventures, and what everyone still left at the Haus was doing this year.  Jack was listening raptly, and Eric suddenly remembered Kent saying that this college thing hadn't been a part of Jack's original plan, and he could feel himself getting choked up.  He tried to talk around it.  Jack was almost certainly not fooled.  

By the time the main course arrived, Eric was back to leading the conversation confidently and making Jack relate everything back to his own life to keep him involved, when he seemed happy enough just to sit there and watch Bitty gesture enthusiastically like he'd never been to a nice restaurant before.

When Eric took a break to actually eat his food, though, Jack looked like he was gritting his teeth against something, until he finally spoke.  "It's weird seeing you talk to Parse," he confessed.  "You're both important people in different parts of my life.  Sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad ways."  He looked like he wanted to apologize for implying that there had been anything less than great between himself and Bitty, as if Eric couldn't tell that they didn't get off to the greatest start.

"I get it," he assured Jack.  "I mean, I get it as well as I need to."

"Thanks.  I want you to understand more, though.  Parse was my best friend during the worst part of my life.  Obviously.  He's a reminder of that.  It sucked for him too, and that made it worse, you know?  Sometimes he dealt with things well, and sometimes pretty terribly.  Same for me, I guess.  It was almost impossible for us not to hurt each other with everything that was going on then.  It still kinda is now.  And clearly Parse is readier for that than I am right now."

Eric wanted to cry.  "That's completely fair, Jack.  You don't have to do anything you're not ready for just because someone else wants you to."  Jack looked right into his eyes at that.  Admittedly, Eric wasn't being subtle.  They hadn't really had a chance to talk to each other over the summer after that night at the Haus.

"Thanks," Jack repeated, quieter.  "I don't know why you would, but if you see Parse again . . . I won't be mad if you talk to him.  I trust you not to say anything I wouldn't want you to."

"And you trust him?" Eric asked.  The logical side of him wanted to be offended that Jack thought permission was necessary, but his emotional side felt immensely grateful for the faith placed in him.  Besides, Jack had almost certainly meant it nicely.

"I trust you, Bitty.  That's enough."

"Oh," Eric breathed, as the staff began removing their plates, and Steve came by with a dessert menu.

"Here we go," Jack joked.  It was actually a strange occurrence that someone else besides family was technically baking for Bitty.  Despite appearances to the contrary, Eric wasn't too snobby about his dessert choices, though.  He tried to make Jack pick one, even when realizing he'd probably go for the apple.

"They are large enough to be shared," Steve suggested awkwardly.  Eric tried to suss out any signs of homophobia in this man who clearly was under the impression that they were on a date.  And that was . . . not necessarily true.

"Don't worry about not finishing it," Jack stressed.  "Get what you want, and I'll have this one."  Eric's prediction was right, of course.

He chose some kind of a cake, thinking it had been a while, and also that their pies might not be up to his own personal standards.

The desserts came, interrupting Bitty's awkward feelings that everyone probably thought they were on a date, and how could he do this to Jack with all the eyes on him.  They were pretty big, but Eric knew they could each finish their own and only be barely overstuffed.  The perks of being young and athletic.

When the check came and Eric was still trying to be as un-intimate as possible, Jack eyed the waiter in a way that somehow made him hand it straight to Jack, who looked at it for maybe a full second before putting a card into it and handing it back.  Eric couldn't even imagine being rich enough to act like that.

"Thank you, Jack.  For the dinner, and the tickets.  And all of the surprising and nice things you said about me."

Jack laughed.  "I wasn't trying to be nice; I was just trying to be honest."  Eric's heart skipped a beat.

"Still," he argued.  "Thank you."

"You're welcome.  It was nothing."

When the check came back and Jack signed it, it seemed like there was no reason for them not to leave, especially considering that Jack probably had an early start and Bitty had class the next day.  He was hesitant to leave Jack, though.  They were having a good time and in a good place, and Eric just wanted to know that it could last.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  They exited the restaurant, and Jack offered to wait at the bus stop with Eric until he got on.  It felt nice to think that Jack might not want to end things either.  Unfortunately, the bus came right on time, which was far too soon.

Jack left him with a hand on his shoulder, looking straight into his eyes as he told him, "Good luck with everything.  Text me later, OK?"

He finally pulled out his phone when he was seated and comfortable on the bus back to Samwell.  The group chat had gone crazy, there were alerts from social media, and a few people had texted him individually.  Three of them were from the same unknown number.

_bittle? it's kent_

_parson, i mean_

_i hope this is actually you and i'm not texting a random stranger_

Well, shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment; I love reading anything from criticism to whatever thoughts came into your head while reading. Seriously, anything. Let me know where you hope this is going!
> 
> I'm [loveandallthat](http://loveandallthat.tumblr.com/) on tumblr; go visit if you want to chat, peruse a mess of a personal blog, or send me short fic prompts for an embarrassingly large assortment of fandoms.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry about the one scene per chapter format, but I'm trying to break myself of a bad habit of everything melting together and nothing having scene transitions.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can never have too much dessert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary is, of course, a lie.
> 
> So, I went back to the last chapters and changed a few things just so that everything worked with the new plot point, which is just that Bitty and Jack dated but it didn't work out. So this chapter got comparatively long.

Over the summer, Eric hadn’t seen much of Jack.  It wasn’t Jack’s fault--he had been extremely busy, understandably so, and Eric had been in Georgia.  Jack had texted, as promised, more than Eric had ever known him to, both privately and in the group chat.  Shitty had even commented on it, trying to be casual, as if he didn’t want to scare Jack off.

He had seen Jack more after moving back to Samwell.  When they were less than an hour apart, it seemed ridiculous to stay apart and stick to flirty awkward texts even when they weren’t busy.  Eric had thought that he’d  been lucky that Jack was even at home the first time they were able to get together again.

They’d been sitting on Jack’s couch, having been ignoring the show currently on the TV for the sake of paying attention to each other.  An explosion had gone off on the screen, alerting them to the fact that they were apparently watching an action movie, and Eric had turned his head to look at it, clasping and releasing his hands.  

Jack had asked, “Is this going to work?”

Eric had answered, “Yes.”

It hadn’t.

Feelings were never the problem.  Even timing wasn’t a problem, not at first.  Jack’s schedule didn’t match Eric’s exactly, but the non-traditional hours of university life and professional sports left a lot of random, overlapping free time.  They managed to get together at least once a week, better than stories Eric had heard about couples who went to different colleges.

They usually hung out in private, for the sake of keeping their relationship a secret from the media.  Obviously there were teammates at Samwell whom they trusted, but not everyone, so it made more sense to hang out at Jack’s place when they had the chance.  Unfortunately, Jack was also the only one of them with a car, meaning that travel-wise it made more sense for them to be at Samwell.  And though every once in a while they would spend time together in public, it was made awkward by the weight of the secret.  

So, sometimes Jack would pretend to casually visit everyone at the Haus, and sometimes Eric would take a bus to Providence, and sometimes Jack would drive all the way to Samwell to pick Eric up and drive him all the way back to his apartment.  The system wasn’t perfect , but it worked for them.  

But one day they were in Eric’s room and Chowder knocked on the door, asking if Eric was coming to a party. He said not this time, and then continued the movie they had been watching.

“What party?” Jack had asked, and Eric had hummed in response until he realized Jack seriously wanted to know.

“Something to do with Chowder’s girlfriend,” Eric explained.  “I didn’t really want to go anyway.”  He rested his head on Jack’s shoulder, and was gratified when Jack shifted to make it easier for him.

“You shouldn’t skip parties just to hang out with me,” Jack insisted, his voice sleepy and comfortable, in contrast to his words.  Eric paused the movie.

“I’m sure you miss out on a lot when you spend time with me.”  Eric had no idea why this was suddenly a big deal; wasn’t this normal?

“That’s different; you only get one college experience.”  Jack moved again, and it meant that Eric had to sit up to turn his head and look him in the eyes instead.  He closed the laptop completely and set it down off to the side.

“Jack, I’m pretty sure you also only get one NHL experience.  And that you go to way fewer parties than I do.  What’s really wrong?”  He was searching Jack’s face for any signs, trying to read any subtle clues in the shape of his frown.

“. . . I don’t want dating me to make you miss out on anything,” he whispered.  The vulnerability in his voice made Eric’s heart clench, and he felt the need to do anything to make it go away.

“If anything, it’s giving me something,” Eric assured him, “because I certainly never had a chance to date like this before.  You know I’d rather be with you than at a dumb party.  That’s _why_ I’m here right now.  Because I want to be.”  He hoped that the feeling behind his words was reaching Jack, that Jack would realize that he meant it with everything he had.

Jack reached his hand out to run it through Eric’s hair.  He was smiling like he couldn’t help it.  “I know that.  But . . .”

Eric’s heart was racing.  “But what?”

“I don’t want you to look back on college and think about what you missed.”  Jack emphasized this statement by sitting up higher, directing his gaze around the room and out the window like he was providing them as examples.

“You didn’t go to a lot of parties in college,” Eric pointed out.  That was what had set this whole thing off, so he figured that might be able to calm it back down.

“I did college differently than most people, for different reasons.”  Jack’s expression became noticeably more closed off, like it always did when he even alluded to everything that had led him to his current situation.

 _Kent says you went to college as a second chance at the NHL_ , he thought but didn’t voice.  “Neither did I.  I’m a gay ex-figure skater who bakes pies for a hockey frat house.  You think I’m going to look back on a college experience and think I missed parties?”  Eric knew he was sounding desperate.  He _was_ desperate.

“Fine, but what about what other people will think?”  At this point, Eric realized that Jack must have been thinking about this for a while.  He had thought about it too.  Eric thought he had gone into this relationship completely aware of what he was getting himself into.

“Chowder knows why I’m skipping.”  Chowder had been on the approved list for telling about Eric and Jack, and Eric was still clinging onto the hope that he could use the inciting incident to end this argument.

“But some people won’t.  Some people will think you’re single, and you’ll have to lie.  I wasn’t thinking about this back then, at graduation, but you know it’s true.  This isn’t what you want to look back on and remember.”  Jack was getting worked up; he was reminding Eric of his own first year at Samwell when Jack used to be angrier and his words were more biting.  Eric had forgiven him for that; he had learned so much about what made Jack feel terrible enough to act like that, but it hurt to even think about it again.

“What if it is, Jack?” Eric asked, unable to fight back tears.  “What if you could be the best thing to ever happen to me and I miss out?  I think we’re good.”

“We’re great,” Jack whispered, face crumpling.  “You’re great.  I just--I can’t hold you back.  I’m sorry.  Believe me.”

And that had been the last time that Eric had seen Jack until the game against the Aces.

\---

Being friends with Jack when he _knew_ how it felt to be more was torture.  Eric wondered if that was what it was like for Kent, except that he didn’t really know that story.  Jack had refused to tell him since it was partly Kent’s secret, and Kent hadn’t told him because he didn’t know Eric knew about Jack already; it was a big mess.

The point was, Eric didn’t know for sure what there had been between them and didn’t exactly know how to handle it, hence his awkward conversation with Kent Parson.

He wondered if Shitty knew.  Of course, he’d have the same reasons as Jack not to tell Eric, but wouldn’t he also have the same reasons as Eric not to even know?

Who could he talk to about this?

He sat in his room, going over the night in his head.  Seeing Jack was endlessly better than not seeing Jack; they were friends first, or something like it, and that had never really stopped.  The awkwardness was a construct of their minds, a created yet unavoidable consequence of their failed ‘something more.’

Eric’s phone chirped.

He unlocked the screen and realized that it was still open to Kent’s texts.  He checked and answered the other one (from Jack: _Did you get back OK_?) and tried to figure out the right way to answer a series of awkward texts from Kent Parson.

_yeah, it’s me_

He wasn’t going to win any awards for creativity, that was for sure.

_what’s up?_

Eric’s phone actually rang.  Kent Parson was calling him.

He panicked, near-dropping the phone and catching it with his other hand before it hit the floor of his room.  His thumb was one swipe away from answering when he stopped, so he answered.

“Hello?” he asked uncertainly, (because even though everything about this situation indicated Kent Parson would respond to him, Eric still hesitated, unable to fully grasp the current reality.)

“Eric?” Kent’s voice asked, which was even weirder.

“Hi, Kent.”  Eric took a deep breath, nervous about where this was going.  Considering they’d talked earlier in the day, and Kent knew that Eric have been at dinner with Jack, there was no way he could imagine this conversation going well.

“Hey, Eric.”

Eric looked at the time, then wondered aloud, “Don't you have a plane to catch tomorrow?”

“Worried about my sleep habits?  Don't bother; tomorrow's an easy day.”

Eric didn't say that wasn't what he meant.  “So what's up, then?”  Eric might have been a little standoffish for someone who had given his number in the first place, but seeing Jack again reminded him of his protective feelings toward him.

Kent hummed like he was acknowledging the slight awkwardness between them.  “Want to meet up?”

“. . . What?”

“Drinks, coffee, terrible diner food?  Whatever’s open at this time.  We can talk.”

Eric looked at the clock, and then remembered that he was on a college campus and everything was open this late.  “You realize I'm not that close to Providence, right?”

“Please, I know exactly where Samwell and that dumb frat house are.”

Eric sighed.  “Insulting the Haus isn't the best way to convince me. Fine.  Frozen yogurt.  Think you can find it on your own?”

“I'll see you in an hour, Eric.”

\---

Eric was five minutes early, and Kent was already there.

He stood up.  “I didn’t ask, but you don’t mind if I call you Eric, right?”

“It _is_ my name.”

“Jack calls you Bitty.”  Kent didn’t seem put off at all by the way that Eric was talking to him; in fact, he was smirking at him.

“It’s what the whole team calls me.  You’re not on our team, so . . .”  Eric trailed off, not sure of any way to end that sentence that didn’t come off even ruder than he intended.

“Right,” Kent agreed easily.  “You’re early.”

“And yet you were still waiting for me, Kent.”  Eric paused.  “. . . If I can call you that.”

“It’s fine.  Guys on the team call me Parse, obviously, but I’m not going to say you can’t.”

Eric tried to think highly enough of Kent to not think that he was trying to make Eric look like a jerk in comparison.

“My nutritionist is going to kill me,” Kent complained, as he completely willingly walked over to start filling up his cup.

Eric had already thought of that, but he felt more in control of the situation by picking the place, and maybe even trying to even the playing field by turning the awkwardness around.  “You could stick to fruit,” he suggested.

“This much fruit isn’t on my diet, either.”  Kent didn’t actually seem to care about this, seeming completely at ease.  He wasn’t even pretending to try to be healthy, based on the toppings he was selecting.

“That can’t be right.”

Kent laughed.  “Lean meats and vegetables, if I actually stuck to it.”

“That sounds horrible.”

Eric had gone a little overboard, but when he brought his cup to the counter, Kent walked straight up behind him, added his, pushed Eric aside, and held out a credit card to the cashier.  The man behind the counter looked at the name on the card, looked back up, and then back at the card, several times.  Eric tried not to smile.

“Thanks,” he mumbled when they sat down.  The cashier was still trying to sneak glances at them.

“It’s fine.  I’m the one who asked you here.”  Kent took a large bite that appeared to be all toppings.  He ate exactly like a generic bro, but it wasn’t unattractive at all.

“You did.  Is something up?”

“Not really, I just . . . wanted to keep talking to you.”

“Oh.”  Eric had nothing to say to that.  He stabbed his spoon into his froyo until he felt the bottom of the cup, and took a small bite.  Dessert had left him not particularly hungry; he probably should have gone with coffee, but something had stopped him.

Kent looked up suddenly.  “You know, you’re Jack’s type.”

Eric frowned.  “I don’t think you’re supposed to tell me that.”

“I think you already know.”  Eric opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted.  “I’ve been thinking about it.  You’re already together.”  He had a smug look on his face that was partially ruined by the fact that he was still eating.

Eric bit his lip to try to keep from saying anything.  Jack had told him upfront that he would have to lie about this, but that was in the context of completely non-Kent-Parson people.  This was uncharted territory.

(“I trust you,” Jack had said.)

He took a deep breath.  “We were,” he admitted on the exhale, hoping the words might get lost in it.

They didn’t.  “Oh.  I’m sorry?”  Kent was resting his chin in his hand, elbow resting on the table, like he was actually trying to decide how he felt about it.

“Are you?”

“I think so.”  Kent still seemed unsure.

Eric had not planned to go here, but one admission had left it harder to contain the rest.  “Jack didn’t tell me much about you, but from what I heard at the party . . .”

“Shit.  Yeah, we used to hook up.  For a while.  A few years, maybe.”  He spoke quietly, and Eric realized that maybe saying Jack’s name when he was out with Kent Parson was a dangerous game to play in general.  His eyes widened, and he looked around, trying not to make it obvious.  They were pretty far from anyone else in the nearly empty establishment, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.

“I suppose I don’t need to ask what happened,” he ventured finally.  Not everything about the draft had been public knowledge, but a combination of that information and knowing Jack personally gave Eric a pretty good grasp on the important parts of the story.

“You probably have a good enough idea, yeah.  You guys, on the other hand . . .”

Eric actually would have thought that them being together in the first place would be much more shocking than them breaking up.  He shook his head.  “Pretty predictable too, actually.  We just couldn’t get our lives to line up.  It's like each time we saw each other was a reminder of how different our lives were.  And of course Ja--he was afraid he was keeping me from enjoying college the way I should.”

Kent clenched his hand on the edge of the table.  “It seems like he got more concerned about enjoying college than I expected him to.”

“Yeah, he started seeming to enjoy himself last year,” Eric agreed.  He was glad for it.

“So, while he was living with you, then?”  And wait, what?

“If you’re trying to say that I made him like college, regret not getting the full experience, and then dump me so that I wouldn’t make the same mistake--”

“Whoa, chill, I don’t mean it’s your fault.  Besides, what do I know about college?”

Eric tried to calm himself down, but not because of Kent’s response.  What, indeed.  How to impress an entire frat house, how to play drinking games, how to be completely relaxed when surrounded by drunk people--but those weren’t college exclusive.

“Don’t tell me to chill.”

“Sorry.”  He offered up the apology easily, looking down into his cup of melting yogurt.

Eric’s anger deflated.  “It’s fine.”

Kent looked him up and down, making him shiver.  “I know I said you’re his type, but you’re different from what I expected.  I mean, no offense, but you’re stronger than you look.”

“Some offense taken.”  Eric was mostly kidding.  He knew what he looked like and how he seemed to people.

“Eh.”  Kent waved his hand dismissively.

Eric could not believe this was his life.  “I guess you had an advantage for figuring this out, but if I want to keep his secret, I should probably learn to be less obvious.”

Kent shrugged, made awkward by the way he had started slouching into his seat.  “And he should stop inviting you to his games and dinner at nice restaurants, but you can’t hide forever.

“So you’re not hiding . . . whatever it is you’re not hiding?”  Eric hazarded.  He had no right to ask personal questions of Kent Parson, but was apparently doing it anyway.

“Being bi?  I guess letting people assume what they want is kind of hiding.  Plus, it’s tied to someone else’s secret, obviously, so I don’t want to shout it from the rooftops.”

Eric couldn’t completely fight a smile.  “I’m starting to think you really are a good guy.  I don’t know if I like it.”

Kent sat up straighter, bringing himself more into Eric’s space.  “To be fair, I really did hurt Jack a lot back in the day.  And maybe even recently.  I mean a lot of things sucked for me too, but I can’t imagine it was worse than what he went through.  I didn’t understand it--I still don’t fucking understand it--so I just kept trying to force him back to normal.”

Eric stayed where he was, though it meant that he and Kent were leaning in and talking close.  “Or what you thought was normal.”

“Yeah.”

“It seems like you both made a lot of mistakes,” Eric decided finally.  “You’re not giving up, though, are you?”  He wasn’t trying to encourage, just honestly asking.  He only meant giving up on being friends, not even thinking about what they used to be, and hoping Kent wasn’t either.  But there was no denying that their lives were way more similar than Jack and Eric’s.

“I’m not really the giving up type.”

Eric looked at his phone.  “I should probably get back.”

“I’ll drive you,” Kent offered immediately.  He knew exactly where to go, Eric remembered, and accepted, mostly out of the apprehension he felt at the thought of walking home alone.  Of course it was another rented Porsche.  The drive was only five minutes, though the walk would have been long and uncomfortable.

Eric got out of the car, but leaned back down.  “Well, if you ever need to talk again, you know where to find me.”

“Yeah, thanks.

If it had occurred to Eric to check the schedule, he might have realized that the Aces were playing in Boston in just a few weeks, and reconsidered his offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to my beta and friend, Jess, who did not let me get away with lazy writing.
> 
> Please, if you feel even slightly inclined, leave me a comment. Criticism is fine, chatting is fine, short comments or long-winded analysis, all fine. Tell me what you like or what you hate.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody expected Kent Parson to go back to Samwell when Jack wasn't even there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know WHY I had the Aces beat the Bruins when the Hawks couldn’t do it last week, but WHATEVER.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~(Wow, let's play guess where the author is from.)~~

Eric didn’t see Jack in the weeks after the game.  They texted, though, and when they talked on the phone, Eric finally admitted to Jack that he’d seen Kent again, and what Kent had guessed.  Jack had tried to act aloof about it, but Eric knew him too well, and pushed enough to find out what was really bothering him.  Jack finally admitted that he wasn’t worried about Kent knowing, especially since he’s kept plenty of Jack’s other secrets, but that he thought it would make things awkward.

As if anything was more awkward than the current situation.

Finally, Eric ended the call by mentioning, gently, that it was completely possible for Jack to talk to Kent directly, and try to get the awkwardness out that way.  Maybe the fact that they were on a more even playing field would keep their conversation cleaner.  And kinder, Eric hoped.

Jack had promised to think about it.

\---

Now that Jack had graduated, and especially because he was out of town, the Samwell hockey team was probably not expecting Kent Parson at their kegster.  And yet, there he was.

Shitty had come back and was a recipient of quite a lot of attention from everyone who had been on the team with him last year, as well as a source of fascination for the new frogs who had heard about him.  Eric was so happy to see him that it barely even hurt when he thought about Jack that night.  Texting wasn’t quite as good, and Eric had seriously missed Shitty.

They ended up in an awkward tangle on the couch, refusing to move no matter who wanted to sit down, and Eric talked about some of the more boring problems in his life, knowing a crowded party wasn’t the time or place to dump his real problems.  He had more to drink than he realized, but cut himself off when he realized Shitty was laughing at his slightly slurred speech.  Eric’s heart felt a thousand times lighter just being around Shitty, other team members slipping in and out of the room and their conversation.  Ransom and Holster stayed the longest, but as soon as they were gone, Shitty grabbed Eric’s wrist and dragged him up the stairs to his room.

“Bro,” he ordered, “you’ve got to tell me what happened between you and Jack.”

So Eric did, of course.

“Damn,” Shitty breathed, “that’s--”

“I know.”

“Progress.”

Eric had been staring at the wall, but he turned to check Shitty’s expression.  “Wait, what?”

Shitty met his eyes and held.  “You know as well as I know that Jack’s always been a little focused on himself.”

It took Eric’s drunk brain at least three times as long to process this as it usually would have.  “Oh.  Well if that’s the case, how do you know he isn’t thinking about himself?”

By the end of the question, Shitty was already shaking his head.  “I don’t buy it.  He hasn’t been like that since he really started being friends with you.”

Every time it was implied that he had changed Jack in some drastic way, Eric felt incredibly awkward.  He had just been trying to be himself and fit in with a group of bros at the same time; surely that combination of actions couldn’t have had such a strong impact on someone like Jack.  But other team members seemed to think the same thing; hell, even Kent had noticed something different in Jack’s behavior.  

“You recognized the good in him before I did,” Eric pointed out finally.

“Oh, I got to know the really good and the really bad of Jack Zimmermann quite early on.”  Shitty didn’t seem inclined to explain anything else.

“I assume you’ve been talking to him?  I would have thought he would have told you about us.”  Was it a good thing or a bad thing that Shitty seemed so out of the loop on this subject; did Eric want to be talked about?

Shitty rearranged their positions so that he didn’t have to crane his neck as much to look at Eric, or to keep taking intermittent sips of terrible beer.  “Sure, he told me you guys broke up and that it was for the best.  I guess I should have figured it out.”

Eric played with the tab on his beer.  “Maybe when I graduate,” he started.

“No.  No, no, no.  You can’t think like that.  I love the guy, you know I do, but either he figures his shit out, or you stay broken up.  You cannot wait a year and a half for him.”

“That wouldn’t be nearly as long as Parse,” Bitty muttered.

“Parse is a different story.”

“I know.  I don’t know why I said that.”

Shitty touched his chin thoughtfully.  “Because you talked to Parse enough to get to know him, realize he isn’t a terrible guy who ruined Jack’s life on purpose, and now you feel for him?”

Eric actually laughed at that.  “I didn’t say that!”

They both got around to standing up to go back downstairs, and then Shitty stopped short, causing Eric to walk right into his back with a muffled grunt.

“Hey,” Shitty whispered, “what’s your new best friend doing here?”

“My--what?”

Shitty pointed, not subtly.  Ten feet away, Kent Parson was taking a selfie with Ransom and Holster.  The man in question looked up at the finger aimed at himself, and walked over when the picture was done.

“Hey, Shitty.  Eric,” he greeted.

“Eric?” Shitty asked.

“Hi, Kent.”

“Kent?”

“What are you doing here?  You know Jack couldn’t make it this time, right?”

Shitty despaired.  “Am I being ignored?”

“Yeah, I have a pretty good grasp on the game schedule,” Kent replied.  “It just seemed like a tradition at this point.”

Eric didn’t believe that for a second.  “Right.  Drink?”

“Sure.”  So Eric led Kent to the keg, not bothering with trying to find more of the beer Shitty had brought.  It reminded Eric of the fact that Kent had probably done something (or several somethings) good enough in his last game that if he were part of their team, they’d be encouraging him into a kegstand.  Eric got him a cup instead.

Upon walking slightly close to the couch, they found it to have been suddenly vacated, but Kent was walking back to the stairs and Eric was trying to protest being led around in his own home.

“You still have the room across from Jack’s?  Or, where Jack’s was?”  Kent was saying, not looking for an answer before they had already ended up in there.

“I don’t know why you think you can just hang out in anybody’s room here,” Eric lied, still trying to keep some semblance of control over the situation.  Kent looked at him like he could see right through him.

“You didn’t come all this way to talk to me, did you?”  Eric asked, when the silence was too much for him.

“Maybe,” Kent confessed.  “I just--fuck, this is going to sound terrible.  I just want to understand what it is about you that made Jack change so much, when--”  He stopped and chugged his beer.

“When you didn’t?”

Kent sighed.  “Yeah.  Well, sort of.  I wasn’t trying to change him, just to help him get where he wanted.  Where we wanted.”

Eric knew this; he had accepted that Kent had his own reasons and that he was really trying to help Jack the best way he thought he could.

“It’s just not what he needed,” he insisted, quietly.  “It’s not your fault that you didn’t know that, although I still wish you had lessened up on the tough love--though I understand that Jack might seem like the kind of person who would benefit from that kind of thing.  Probably Jack didn’t even know what he needed, but Shitty seems to think that I did something, which is great, but I wasn’t trying to--”

“Whoa, dude, breathe,” Kent cut him off.  Eric didn’t see the problem; he was breathing fine.  An awkward silence descended over them.

“Maybe I can see it, a little bit,” Kent said, so quietly Eric wasn’t sure if he heard him correctly.  Eric immediately jerked his eyes to Kent’s face, and saw him looking down into the beer he was holding between his knees from his position at Eric’s desk chair.  Eric himself had ended up sitting on his bed, but quickly relaxed into a slouch.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eric admitted, after a minute.

“You’re honest, but you’re still nice.  And stronger than you look, like I said last time.  That’s why you’re good for Jack.”

“Apparently not good enough.”  Eric regretted that as soon as he said it, but Kent just went with it.

“Yeah, well, me either.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”  Then Eric remembered Jack’s promise to think about talking to Kent.  “Hey, have you talked to him recently?”

Kent finished his drink and left the empty cup on Eric’s desk, standing up.  Eric thought he might leave, but he just dropped onto the other end of the bed, leaving a respectable amount of room between the two of them.

“Did you tell him to?”  Kent asked.  “And you’re still wondering why people say you were good for him.  Yeah, he called me.  I dropped my phone and missed the fucking call, but I called him back.”

Eric put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile, trying not to laugh at the image that conjured.  Especially because it was a little sad to think that Kent was that surprised to hear from Jack.  “And?” he asked, hand muffling his voice.

“It was good, I guess.  Better than before, so maybe that was you, too.”  Eric shook his head at that, but Kent continued.  “I said I was sorry for last time, he said he was sorry for the time before that.  I mean, there’s still earlier shit that we didn’t even touch, but whatever.”

“You should probably go to couple’s therapy,” Eric joked.  But really, he was wondering how their friendship could ever work if they didn’t deal with their past.  Though it was just as possible that bringing up old issues wouldn’t help at all, would drive them further apart.

“Cute,” Kent deadpanned.

Eric grinned, earlier drinks still hitting him hard.  He tipped sideways until his head was on the bed.  “I’m glad you talked,” he said, directly into his comforter.

\---

When Eric woke up after not remembering falling asleep, he knew something weird had happened.  When Kent Parson was asleep in his bed, it was confirmed.  He patted around the bed a few times until his hand ended up holding his phone, and he checked the time.  It was 3:26; the party had probably just ended.

This was going to be awkward; he hated waking people up, much less people he didn’t even know.  Eric put his hand on Kent’s shoulder, and watched his eyes slowly open.

“Shit,” Kent said.

“It’s 3:30,” Eric reassured him, “So you’re probably not missing any flights.”

“You wouldn’t believe the kinds of times we fly sometimes,” Kent lamented.  “But no.  Just missing curfew.”

Eric stood up and stretched, straightening out his shirt and thinking about completely different circumstances when he’d been performing similar actions, about waking up with somebody else.  

“How late were you going to stay at the party if you hadn’t fallen asleep?  I bet you still would have been late.”

“Nope, too much logic when I just woke up.”  

Kent’s words make Eric imagine him waking up during other parts of his life, parts of his life he may have spent waking up with Jack, and it hurts.  It was weird having been with Jack the whole time not knowing for sure that he’d been with Kent before, even as much as he suspected it.  Finding out now, when everything was supposed to be over between Eric and Jack, was something Eric hadn’t been expecting.

He had to admit that the jealousy was there, but inevitably dampened by their separation.  Guilt for his current--friendship?  Acquaintanceship?--with Kent was similar in that regard.  He didn’t owe it to Jack not to talk to Kent, or anything, though as friends they probably owed each other a degree of honesty and upfrontness.

“So, you’re leaving, then?”  Eric wasn’t sure if he sounded like he was trying to kick him out or get him to stay.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted Kent to do, either, because there was probably still more they hadn’t talked about.

“Did you have anything else to talk to me about?” Kent asked, suddenly more serious and awake.

That was a little too direct, put too much pressure on Eric.  “I just--I think I’m still mad at you for how you talked to Jack,” he confessed, “and the fact that you knew him better and longer than I did.”

“Wow, you’re honest when you wake up.  Listen, you wanted to help Jack and keep him close too, right?  It’s just a thing that happens when you know him.  You were nicer about it than I was, and I feel like shit about the way I did it, but I was frustrated watching Jack do something I don’t understand.  We used to have the same goals, you know?”

“Yeah, sorry, I shouldn’t keep bringing it up.  But you’re finally at the same level?”  Eric offered.

Kent shook his head reverently.  “Playing against him is--you wouldn’t believe it.  It’s where we expected we’d end up, but I couldn’t have even imagined this.”

“I don’t know everything that happened between you, but I think Jack might be more ready to understand now,” Eric suggested tentatively.  “Especially if you’re in a better place than last time, too.”

“Are you still telling me to be nice to him?  You’ve got it bad.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Touche.”  Kent finally managed to get himself out of Eric’s bed, which eliminated an awkward weight on Eric’s shoulders at the sight.  It was too intimate for their level of not-quite-friendship.

“I’ll walk you out,” Eric offered, and Kent waited long enough to indicate that he was accepting.

They got to the first floor, and Shitty was still there, chatting on the couch with Lardo.  They looked up.

“What the fuck?” Lardo asked, which was fair.

“I was just leaving,” Kent said.  “No time to get my ass kicked at beer pong.  Next time.”

Eric shrugged uncomfortably as though he were just as confused by the situation as they were, and hurried out the door.

“I’ll see you around,” Kent said, as they stood on the front porch, staring at each other.  He stepped down onto the path to the sidewalk.

“And--”  Eric bit down on his next words as hard as he could, but Kent turned around and looked at him searchingly, and Eric buckled.  “Why do you think he broke up with me?” he whispered, hearing his own voice break.

Kent had, at one point, known Jack better than anyone, and that still would mean something to this day.  But he just clapped a hand on Eric’s shoulder, looked at him for a second, and then dragged him into a quick hug.  “It’s just what he needed to do.”

They broke apart, and Eric thought about the fact that Kent had likely also wondered the same thing, years ago, and felt bad for even asking.

He watched Kent drive away, and then walked back in to deal with Shitty and Lardo’s inquisition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta-ed, let me know if you see any mistakes! (Let me know what you think no matter what, if you want.)
> 
> One chapter left! Then I will . . . weakly give into my urges and write more CP fanfic, probably.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He got them in the mail, in formal packaging: a first class, round-trip airline ticket to Las Vegas, and one ridiculously amazing rinkside ticket to next week’s game. There was a note inside, scrawled messily on lined paper in direct contrast to its fancy surroundings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost had Kent have another away game in New York so that Bitty could be like, 'OK at this point it’s just ridiculous' but I figured this way was more and less ridiculous at the same time.
> 
> My brother went to Vegas for his 21st birthday so I asked how many times he was actually carded, and he said, “maybe thrice,” so here we are.

He got them in the mail, in formal packaging: a first class, round-trip airline ticket to Las Vegas, and one ridiculously amazing rinkside ticket to next week’s game.  There was a note inside, scrawled messily on lined paper in direct contrast to its fancy surroundings.

_I put you by some friends of my teammates.  Think about it._ ****

How was this his life?

Eric ran through a list of people he could call about this in his head and Shitty ended up at the top.

He still wound up tapping on Jack’s name instead.

“Hey, Bitty,” Jack answered, voice fond.  It sounded like there were people talking around him.  “Hold on a second.”

This was such a bad idea.

He didn’t exactly wait until Jack said that he could start talking, so there was no telling when Jack started hearing his babbling.  “I probably shouldn’t have even called you with this, it’s just that I couldn’t think of anybody else, especially because it’s Kent and it’s not like I can talk about him with just anybody, since he’s famous, and _you’re_ famous, and a lot of things I could say about you guys--I mean, does Shitty even know?”

“Yes, Shitty knows,” Jack answered.  “What was the rest?”

“You mean I could have called Shitty about this?”

“You called me.  Bitty, what’s up?”

“I got something strange in the mail,” he answered, like it might be better if he eased into the story.  That was almost certainly not the case.

“Bitty, I know that it’s the twenty-first century, but people do still sometimes send things in the mail,” Jack teased.

“Oh, ha-ha, Mr. Zimmermann.  It’s . . . from Kent.”

Jack was quiet for a while.  “What would Parse send you?” he asked, somewhat harshly.  Right off the bat, that wasn’t a good sign.

“Aces tickets?”  Eric suggested, like he didn’t already know.  He cringed at the question in his voice, imagining being called out on it.

“He’s nowhere near Samwell for a while,” Jack said, confused.  

“It’s a home game.”

“How are you supposed to get to Vegas?”

Eric was caught already.  “Probably with the plane ticket he sent?”

Jack sighed.  “Bitty, if you’re holding back anything else . . .”

“No other weirdly expensive tickets!  Just the note,” he reassured.  Possibly handwritten notes weren’t reassuring.

There was a long pause before Jack spoke again.  “The note, which said,” he hinted, waiting for Eric to finish.

“It just told me to think about going.  I just--I didn’t know how to feel about this, so I wanted to call someone, and I picked you.”

All the possible reasons that he shouldn’t have selected Jack flew through his mind.  He’s your ex, he’s Kent’s ex, they still have bad blood, everyone in this situation is awkward around each other.

“Do you even _want_ to go?”

Eric had to think about that one.  “I’m curious,” he hedged.

“If you’re looking for my permission, you don’t need it.”  Jack sounded uncomfortable, like he was being forced to even think about this situation, much less talk about it.

“I know that,” Eric lied.  “It’s not a permission thing.  I don’t want to go if it’s going to be weird for you.”

Someone in the background checked on Jack, wherever he was, asking how much longer he was going to be.  Eric hadn’t even asked what he was doing.

Jack came back on the line.  “Don’t worry about me.  If it’s something you want to do, you should do it, and I’ll figure out how to be fine with it.”

He was doing it again, placing what he thought would make Eric happy ahead of what would make Jack happy, even though the latter was all that Eric wanted in the first place.  It was frustrating, sweet and terrible.

“Jack,” Eric begged.  For what, he didn’t know.

“Seriously, I want you to go, see what happens.  Maybe it’ll be good.  And tell Ke--Parse I said hi.  I have to go.”

Jack had already hung up, but Eric said bye into the silence.  He hadn’t even found out what Jack had been doing.

He almost definitely should have called Shitty instead.  Now it was almost like he had to go, or seem like he wasn’t trusting Jack to say what he meant.  Not that this decision was supposed to be up to Jack, shit, why did Eric do this to himself?  He flipped the ticket to the game over and over in his hand, and opened Skype to try to get ahold of Shitty.

Of course, Shitty agreed with Eric’s decision to go, citing reasons such as, “it might move things along.”  Whatever that meant.

Already drained from these conversations, he called Kent, who answered pretty quickly.

“Hey, Eric.”

Kent sounded perfectly cheerful, and he definitely didn’t want to think about what a change that was from talking to Jack, who really was a lovely person.

“Hi, Kent,” Eric answered, suddenly shy.  “I got your package.”  Well, that sure couldn’t be interpreted wrong.

The smile in Kent’s voice indicated he noticed.  Well, that or just that he was in a good mood.  “Oh yeah,” he drawled, “I was wondering if you’d call.  Does this mean you’ll come?”

“Um.”  Eric hesitated.  “Why did you ask me to go?”

“It just got stuck in my head.  We got a bunch of seats together, and I was trying to think of just one person here in Vegas to invite, but I couldn’t.  So I figured, why be limited?”

“And I’m the first person you thought of?”  Eric asked, disbelievingly.

Kent laughed.  “Well, I can’t invite _one_ member of my family, and a lot of my friends already play.  I wasn’t going to invite Zimms, obviously.”

Eric tried to find fault with that logic.  Surely he had other friends who would be willing to go.

“Also,” Kent continued, “I thought it would be interesting.”

And there it was.  “Well, thanks,” Eric replied sarcastically.

“Fun-interesting!” Kent clarified.  “Fuck, don’t get mad.  Maybe I’m just still curious about you, and figured maybe you might want to see me.”

He wanted to ask Kent whether he was curious about Eric or about Jack-through-Eric’s-eyes, but to be fair, Kent could accuse him of staying in contact with him for a similar reason.

“Yeah,” Eric admitted.  “If I didn’t, I probably just wouldn’t have called.”

“Harsh,” Kent joked good-naturedly.  “So you’re coming.”

“Sure,” Eric answered.  “Since you shelled out for first class.  Um, but the return ticket is for the day after?  So . . . where should I stay?”

“With me, if you’re cool with that.  I’d get you a hotel room if it’s too awkward.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“I’ll pick you up at the airport,” Kent offered, and then hung up, leaving Eric sitting awkwardly holding his phone and still wondering about the specifics of the trip.  He could have called back, but he knew he wasn’t going to; he was just going to hop on a plane next Thursday and go.

Eric packed a bag randomly at the last minute, having put it off due to nerves.  He put the game ticket in there, and the plane tickets in his jacket pocket, thinking it probably wasn’t going to be cool enough in Las Vegas to need it, but he had to go take a bus to the airport, and, well, you never know.  He’d had multiple dreams about forgetting them, missing a flight or the game.

He left the Haus with a bag over his shoulder, knowing he was definitely going to get noticed, thinking about who he didn’t want to explain himself to, but they’d all know pretty soon anyway; word traveled fast.  He probably should have told one person, so they could tell everyone else while he was gone.

Ransom being awake weirdly early presented him with that opportunity.  He was probably on some kind of study binge.

“Vegas?” he yelled.  “Sorry, but seriously?  Bro, what the hell are you getting yourself into?”

Then he asked, “Does Jack know?”

Eric told him that he had no idea what he was getting himself into, and that yes, Jack knew, which made Ransom widen his eyes even more.

“I have to go,” he insisted apologetically, leaving more questions as he walked to take the campus bus to the city bus stop to take the city bus to the airport.  Kent probably hadn’t imagined this part of the trip, always having cars to take him to the airport, or the ability to drive himself.

He sat on the bus and scrolled through Twitter on his phone, then was interrupted by a notification.

_Have a good trip._

From Jack.  That was interesting; he hadn’t been initiating texts with Eric since they had broken up.  

_Thanks! :)_

_Good luck at your game._

He didn’t get any more texts from Jack, but that was OK.  He wondered if he should tell Kent that he was on his way, reassure him that he still needed to show up at the airport (even though Eric kept thinking about how bad of an idea it was for an NHL star to casually show up to pick someone up from the airport.)  

At least the thoughts in his head kept him distracted until he got to the airport.  It was early enough that security wasn’t bad, so he had time to sit and get a latte before he boarded.  It also made him just twitch enough that he texted Kent to let him know he was at the airport, before he turned his phone off and got on the plane.

Since he only had a bag he’d carried on, Eric was able to leave the airport right after he got off the plane.  Of course he’d turned his phone back on the second they landed, but he waited until he was outside in the arrivals area before he started a text to Kent--except that then he saw him, leaning leisurely on a sports car Eric couldn’t even begin to identify, sleek and ostentatious compared to what he was used to seeing in Georgia, but not completely out of place at the airport in Las Vegas.

“Hi,” Eric breathed, suddenly awkward.

Kent had a lazy smirk gracing his face.  “I wasn’t sure you were actually going to come.”

Eric’s own laugh surprised him.  “And you decided to wait here anyway?” he teased.

“I had a good feeling.”  Kent waited for a few more seconds, then went around to help Eric get his bags situated, waving off the stammered protests.  He opened the passenger door for him, too, but left it open while he went around to the driver’s side instead of closing it after him, like a driver or a gentleman.  Eric wondered if he was trying to make sure that he didn’t feel awkward, but there was really no avoiding that.

“So,” Kent started, “you probably guessed this, but I’ll have to go to the rink soon.  I don’t know what you’ll want to do--hang out at my house, or near the arena with the friends of the guys on the team.”

“Goodness,” Eric muttered, and Kent laughed at him.  “You’d trust me in your house?  Or with people who could tell their friends that your friend is weird?”

“Eric, I barely understood that.  But yes, both of those.  Or you could take my car and explore on your own.  It has insurance!” he insisted, when Eric expressed his surprise at the offer.

“I am not about to take your ridiculous, fancy car all over a crazy city I’ve never been to before,” Eric argued.

“Suit yourself,” Kent replied, grinning mischievously.  He gunned the engine getting onto the highway, probably drawing too much attention, and startling Eric a little, before he relaxed and let himself enjoy it.

“You really think that I should hang out with a bunch of bros in Vegas,” Eric deadpanned.  His incredulity had completely outweighed his awkwardness.  This entire situation: here, in this car, with this boy, and with these plans for the night.

“Damn straight.”

“Or--” Eric stopped himself from making the obvious joke.

“Or,” Kent answered, like he was agreeing with something.

 

“You have got to be kidding me,” Eric declared, when he was presented with a Parson jersey.

“That’s what you said when you saw the house,” Kent pointed out.  “I swear, houses are just cheaper here.”

“Do not change the subject on me, Mister Parson,” Eric demanded, then he sighed.  “You’re really going to make this trip interesting for me, aren’t you?”

“You’re certainly never going to forget it,” Kent promised.  
  


Kent’s teammates’ friends were fine; they teased Eric about being a small hockey player, about his accent, and they asked him questions about Jack upon learning that he was who Kent and Eric had in common (in more ways than they were probably expecting.)  He didn’t know why they found it so interesting considering that they were also friends with hockey players, on a Stanley Cup winning team, no less, but maybe there would always be something special about Jack Zimmermann.

They made it to the strip, where everything was flamboyant and bustling even in the afternoon, and part of Eric hated it and part of him loved it like crazy.  He was pretty much not old enough for Vegas, but as it turned out, neither were some of the other guys.  They still tried their hands at getting into a casino, and a club, and managed a little while at each of them before they left nervously.  Something about the game of subterfuge lent itself to bonding, enough that Eric almost felt comfortable at dinner while they joked about his food choices and complained about girls, eyeing Eric like they expected him to join in.

“I just got out of a long-term relationship,” he explained, which wasn’t technically true, but it felt like it was anyway.  They stopped bothering him like they were worried he was going to dump his feelings on them, which had definitely not been his plan.

“Probably means you need more to drink,” one of the actually of-age guys suggested, and immediately pretended to buy himself a terrible beer that he immediately and unsubtly passed on.

Eric didn’t mind; it was a thousand times better than frat party beer, and he nodded his thanks and took a few sips.  Lord, but he shouldn’t get drunk with a bunch of people he just met, in a random city where the closest thing to a home base for him is--Kent Parson’s ridiculous house, fuck.  Who even buys themselves a house to live in alone?

His beer was gone by the time he tuned back in to the conversation.

Eric still felt weird about the jersey, and it was also really, really warm, but he felt a lot more normal and cool (temperature-wise, if nothing else) when he was surrounded by Aces fans, some of whom had also selected Parson jerseys.  Most of them, actually, Eric noticed as he looked around.  But that made sense.

It struck him that the team had gotten together to get seats for their friends, and he was the one friend chosen by the captain, the leading scorer of the league.  That was weird.

Soon enough he got into the game; watching Kent skate from up close was so unbelievable it was almost inspiring.  Eric might have been able to skate as well as, or even better than him, but never within the confines of hockey.

When Kent scored his first goal, the girl behind them drunkenly threw her arms around Eric, which he assumed was because she’d been able to see the name on the back of his shirt.  He was just as excited, though.

His seatmates for the evening were glancing at him with no subtlety, like they were expecting him to slip her his number, or something else.

Then they started naming the players on their respective jerseys, loudly and pointedly bragging about, “wasn’t it nice of him to get the tickets?”

“Wait,” the girl who was currently removing herself from Eric yelled, “does that mean you know Kent Parson?”

Eric nodded.  He had no idea how to behave in this situation, and he scratched his head.

“What’s he like?” she asked, eyes lighting up.

“He’s certainly a character,” Eric responded vaguely.  He didn’t really think he was an authority on what Kent Parson was like.

“I heard so many things about him and Jack Zimmermann,” she continued, and Eric flinched just at the sound of the name.  “Oh,” she exclaimed, misinterpreting, “have you met him, too?”

“We went to school together,” he answered.  His tone was probably surprising; he was trying to be friendly, but knew that it wasn’t coming across successfully.  The girl was pretty and friendly, and he immediately felt bad, even without the guys staring at him like he was passing up a great opportunity.

“Eric Bittle,” he introduced himself, briefly sparing a moment to hope she doesn’t remember his name and look him up or, like, talk to any reporters or something.   _Awkward College Student Invited to Aces Game by Captain Kent Parson, Talks about Jack Zimmermann the Whole Time_.

OK, so that wasn’t likely.

“Emily,” she offered, smiling.  Eric smiled back, and turned back to the game.  

Kent scored again, and they won 2-1.

They waited outside, and Eric was thinking the whole time about when he’d seen Kent at the Aces and Falconers game last year, when this had all started.  The team rounded the corner, and Kent caught his eye like maybe he was thinking the same thing.

“Eric, dude, I still think you could have scored with that chick,” one of the guys was saying to him, conveniently at the exact moment that Kent came into earshot.  Eric didn’t think people still said “scored” in that context.

But Kent just winked, and said, “the night’s still young,” slinging his arm around Eric’s shoulders.  He tried not to take it the way that . . . he was taking it, especially since it must have sounded like a normal comment that would imply that Kent and Eric were going to go to a club or something.

“Are we actually going to a club?”  Eric asked, when they had finally split from the group.

“We could.  You’re only here until tomorrow night, so I don’t want you to miss out on anything.”

Eric thought about that.  He didn’t necessarily want to, but it seemed slightly better than going alone to Kent’s, so.

“Sure.”

“All right,” Kent said, and somehow had a taxi stopping right by them, when Eric hadn’t even seen any.  He stared at Kent, and then insisted that he hadn’t been.

The club they ended up at let Kent in right away; Eric wasn’t sure if he was a regular or if they just immediately recognized and admitted celebrities.  It was upscale, but somehow simultaneously trashy.  Nearly everyone had some kind of cocktail, and Eric and Kent did too, almost as soon as they had walked in.

“Did you even order these?” Eric asked, since it was actually an important safety concern.

“I know the bartender,” Kent reassured him, which explained enough.

Eric’s phone vibrated with a text from Jack, and as he was taking his phone out, Kent was getting his as well.  

“Wow, Jack actually congratulating me on my win.  That’s definitely all you, Eric.”  Kent watched him look at his phone and respond.  “What’d he say to you?”

 **** “Just asked me how it was going.”

“Making sure I’m treating you nicely?” Kent teased, which was actually kind of exactly what was happening.

“He doesn’t usually text me this much anymore,” Eric replied, knowing that didn’t answer the question at all.

“Am I going to have to institute a no Jack Zimmermann rule?”

“Of course not,” Eric admonished, “And not only because we might run out of things to talk about.  We could dance?”

“We can dance, but we don’t need Jack to have things to talk about.  As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember having talked about everything we had to say about him the last time.”

 

When they were back at Kent’s house, on a ridiculously huge sofa drinking glasses of water that Kent had gotten, it was pretty damn obvious that neither of them had gotten everything off their chests.

“We can’t talk about him,” Eric insisted.  “It just feels like gossipping, or whining.”

Kent moved so that he could sprawl across the entire couch.  “You’re not over him,” he accused.

“Neither are you,” Eric fired back immediately.

“It’s been years; I’m fine.”

“Fine people don’t tend to drive an hour just to get kicked out of a bedroom in a frat house.”

Kent sighed.  “Whatever.  Thanks to you, I’m talking to him more, so it’s better.”

Even though Eric was obviously still in contact with Jack, hopefully always would be, he hadn’t known this.  Jack probably didn’t talk about it to anybody else; what he had with Kent was from a completely different part of his life.

“Oh,” Eric managed.  “Well.  Um.”

“You don’t have to say anything.

“No, I mean, I want to.  Because you helped me too; knowing you means I understand things a little better.”

“See?  We don’t have to talk about it.”  Kent sounded frustrated, and Eric realized all at once that this was as good as they were both prepared to feel about the topic.

He also looked at the flashing light of his phone, knowing that Jack had likely texted him back.  It made him think of all of the things that Jack had been through, all of the reasons that he couldn’t have been happier with Kent or with Eric, everything that made him think he needed distance from them, or maybe the reasons that he truly did.

Eric couldn’t be mad at Jack, and he didn’t want to be.  He could still love him and be his friend.  Kent could still be mad at him, and be trying to reestablish something between them.  They could be these people, relate to each other in these weird ways, and not try to change anything.

“You’re right,” Eric agreed.  “We don’t.”  He flopped back on the couch as well, head on the armrest, legs out so that his feet were under the back cushion of the couch, bringing his legs to run parallel to Kent’s.

“Drink your damn water,” Kent advised.  His eyes were closed, but he nudged Eric’s leg until he was finishing off the glass anyway.

After several minutes of almost falling asleep on the couch, Kent shoved himself up and hefted Eric to his feet too.  “Bed,” he mumbled.

Instead of heading for the guest room with all of his stuff, Eric followed Kent and flopped down on the far side of his bed.

“Is this payback?” Kent asked, already getting in, like it didn’t matter.

“Something like that.”

 

Eric Bittle woke up in Kent Parson’s bed and it took ten minutes of staring at the ceiling to remember how that had happened.

Kent’s hand was on his shoulder, which registered to Eric as kind of a strange sleeping habit, but that was the only place they were touching.  It was reassuring to know that he could leave to go drink water or throw up or something, even though all he wanted to do was not move at all.

He moved slightly to test Kent’s grip, which tightened as he pulled away, making Eric really look at him for the first time since he’d woken up.  His hair was exactly as messy as it always was, which Eric would definitely chirp him about if they had that kind of relationship, and also if Kent were awake.  He looked good relaxed, unguarded.  Then again, he looked good most of the time.

Eric opted to close his eyes for a few more seconds, and before he knew it he was waking up again, this time because the bed was moving.

“You’re finally awake,” Kent greeted him.  He was reclining against the headboard, holding a glass of water and handing another one over to Eric.

“Um, that’s my line?” Eric tried, accepting the water and taking a few sips.  He handed it back, and Kent deposited both of them onto a nightstand.

“It’s been a long time since I woke up with a guy in my bed,” Kent said, a hint of teasing in his voice.

Eric wondered if Kent meant that he’d had a lot of women but no men in his bed, or just nobody at all.  He kept the question to himself.  

He thought about when Kent had visited.  “Hasn’t been long for me.”

“You’re going to make me jealous.

Eric went red.  “I meant you.”

Kent’s eyes widened, and he smirked.  “Oh.”

“Do you have to be anywhere today?”  Eric asked, innocently.

“Of course not.”  Kent seemed offended.  “I wouldn’t invite you here just to ditch you yesterday _and_ today.”

Unexpectedly charmed, Eric sat up and really looked at Kent, who was looking up at him from his casual sprawl.  He was infringing upon Eric’s space, but considering this was his bed, maybe it was the other way around.

Kent suddenly reached out and grabbed Eric’s wrist, making him jump.  “It’s really over between you two?” he asked.

“Yes,” Eric confirmed, irritated.  He didn’t like to talk about it; he thought they had explicitly promised to be done with that.

But Kent just sat up too, putting himself right in Eric’s space.  He reached out a hand slowly, in Eric’s sight the whole time, and then smoothed it unambiguously suggestively over Eric’s chest.  He breathed in sharply, watching the hand on him move with the inhale.

Honestly, Eric had been wondering if they’d been leading up to this, but it seemed preposterous, not to mention in poor form.  They weren’t supposed to talk about Jack, but this could ruin their friendship with him, undoubtedly.  It shouldn’t, but it still could.

Despite all of that, Kent’s hands felt good on him.  His bed was soft, and it smelled good, and Kent was really attractive, and close.  Eric couldn’t think with it all, so he rested his hands on the sides of Kent’s face for a second, making clear that he wasn’t completely trying to rebuff the advance.

“Breakfast?” he suggested.

Kent looked him up and down, then pulled his hands back and stood up.  “Sure,” he answered, so Eric followed him.  Then he immediately made himself at home in Kent’s kitchen, starting on pancakes without asking.

“This is not what I thought you meant,” Kent said casually, from where he had immediately deposited himself into a chair that allowed him to watch Eric cook.

“You don’t seem to mind,” Eric responded, as if that would have stopped him.  Well, maybe it would have.  Their time together seemd fragile, like either one of them could break the moment if they slipped up even slightly.  He was worried that one small surprise or cringe would take them so far past the point of no return that Kent would just send him to the airport early.

After they had eaten, and Kent had mentioned at least five times that the food was ridiculously good (which Eric had already known, obviously), Eric was led to the bathroom off of the room that was supposed to be his the previous night.  He freshened up, and looked in the mirror for a long while.  There as a weird tension between them, and he knew it.  It might have even been a simple curiosity and easy physical attraction.  But there was an underlying knowledge that Eric might have just wanted to be where Jack had been and know Kent in a way he had known him.

Clearly he wasn’t over Jack, and this had started out as an unhealthy way to keep trying to understand him, but as it turned out, he _did_ understand why Jack would have liked Kent, because he had started to like him too.  Sure, the guy made it seem like everything was easy in a way it had never been for Eric (or Jack) but that also meant that he didn’t sweat the small stuff.  An easy grin and extreme confidence?  Yeah, he could see the appeal.  Even just the fact that he’d picked Eric out of all the people he knew, to hang out with a bunch of weird hockey bros and go to his game, was somehow endearing.

Eric remembered the Kent Parson trying desperately to convince Jack to stay with him, to sign with the Aces and be done caring about college life, and thought about how he hadn’t really seen that side, since.  Maybe Jack brought it out of him; maybe they made each other worse.  Or maybe chill, “modest bro” Kent was a really good act that nobody except Jack saw through.

That was the biggest conflict in Eric’s head right now.  But he just left, sat on the couch in the living room on his phone until Kent was there as well.

He walked into Eric’s space, sat down next to him, put a hand unambiguously on his knee, and asked, “Are we on the same page here?”

Eric swallowed, and didn’t pretend not to know what he meant.  “If we do anything . . . what would it mean to you?”

“I mean, not to sound rude, but I probably can’t date you.”

“No, I know.  I just mean, this wouldn’t be all about Jack, would it?  Like a revenge thing?”

Kent just stopped.  “You don’t really think that, do you?”

Eric sighed.  “No, but I do believe it’s something to do with him.”

Kent sat down hard enough that it jostled Eric a little, bringing their legs flush against each other, and answered, “Maybe.”

His mouth was a tight line, and Eric stared openly for a while, Kent blatantly allowing this.  Then Eric brought his hand to the far side of Kent’s face to gently turn his head so they were facing each other.  It felt weird, like something he definitely shouldn’t have permission to do.  Another confusing thing gained from his relationship with Jack, maybe, or at least the fact that they had both been with him.

And wasn’t that the problem?  It was impossible to disentangle Jack from their interactions.  So, accepting that, knowing that this move was something that might be about somebody else for both of them, Eric leaned in and kissed Kent Parson.

In any other situation it would be surprising, but here it was completely expected that he was immediately kissed back, pushed a little so he was leaning back onto one hand and not completely balanced.  Eric had gone years without being kissed, and then spent months on the receiving end of, in his opinion, the best ones imaginable, only to have them taken away.

But it _had_ been a while since he had kissed someone new, and it had never been under such weird circumstances.  They stayed in his mind, forced from the forefront by the incredibly distracting sensation that was Kent deepening their kiss at the same time as he nudged one more time until Eric was fully on his back under him.

This made everything extremely nice; Kent’s body wasn’t Jack’s but he was in fantastic shape.  He was warm and he smelled good and he was into this, but still considerate enough to keep his weight on his elbows on either side of Eric.  He moaned; he couldn’t help it.

Then the thoughts that had gone into hiding in Eric’s brain came back, and he said, quiet and muffled, “Stop.”

To his credit, Kent stopped immediately, and even sat back up to get a better look.

“I’m sorry.  I just--”

“No,” Kent stopped him.  He might have been breathing heavily, or Eric might have just been projecting.  “You’re right.  That’s probably not smart.”

Eric took a deep breath, then looked at him gratefully.  Kent was smiling tightly again, looking exactly as he had before Eric had leaned in to kiss him.

“Do you want to go to the airport?  You might be early, though.”

“That might be a good idea,” Eric admitted.  “Just to keep us from doing anything we’ll regret.”

Kent suddenly smirked.  “Still tempted.”

“A little,” Eric confessed.

Standing up, Kent leaned over Eric to rest an arm on the couch behind him.  He grabbed Eric by the chin and brought their mouths together, softer and slower than before.  Eric could feel his face turning red, and Kent pulled back.

“Get your stuff ready,” he whispered  
  


The drive back to the airport was silent, but Kent still pulled over and got out of his car to help Eric with his bags.  Before he walked back to his car, Kent put a hand on Eric’s shoulder and dragged him into a hug, tighter and intimate than their current relationship seemed to invite.  Eric leaned into it; it was a good hug and he was generally in need of those lately.  

Kent pulled back and looked at him for a while.  There was still something weird between them, not diminished at all by the fact that they’d stopped themselves from going too far.  He clasped his hands together behind Eric’s neck, resting his arms on his shoulders in an oddly casual gesture, and their eyes finally met.

“Call me sometime,” Kent said, offhand.  His eyes said that he meant it, though, and Eric was able to tell.

“Sure,” he replied, and meant it.  “Maybe call Jack sometimes?”

“I do,” Kent confessed.  “He doesn’t always answer.”

“Oh.”

“One day we’ll all hang out,” Kent suggested, and Eric was terrified at what could happen.  It sounded like planning an ambush.

“In a while,” Eric decided.  Kent and Jack may have had plenty of time to get over each other (not that it necessarily worked), but Eric and Jack hadn’t yet.

“Yeah.  All right, don’t miss your flight.”  Kent pulled Eric in for tight, quick hug, then messed up his hair a bit and pushed him away.

Eric still looked over his shoulder as he walked through the doors, catching a glimpse of Kent leaning against his car and watching him, waving when he saw him looking.  
  


When he got through security, Eric sat down with a drink and a subpar pastry from the coffeeshop, and pulled out his phone.  There was a text from Kent to have a good flight, and he responded with a _thanks_ and then, realizing, added _for everything_.

Then he read the texts he had missed from Jack, sighed, and called him instead.

“Hey, Jack.  I’m at the airport right now.  Yeah, I had fun; he was nice.  I think you should come by the Haus sometime soon, though.  We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of uncommon pairing CP feelings, so I might be going through a bunch of them for a while. I don’t have a problem with Jack/Bitty, but I never connect very deeply with any of the fanworks for them. I think people just like them in a different way than I do. WHICH IS THEIR PREROGATIVE.
> 
> Obviously I don’t have a complete handle on either character yet, but I’m working on it.
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for reading, for your comments and kudos and conversations. This was a ton of fun. Find me on tumblr as [loveandallthat7](http://loveandallthat7.tumblr.com/) (you can send me fic requests!) or just wait around until I post more CP, because I don’t think I can resist it.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr as [loveandallthat](http://loveandallthat.tumblr.com/), although I don't post much CP at the moment.
> 
> I'm not sure I'll continue this, but I have to be honest and say that if I do, it probably would go in a Bitty/Parse direction. The next chapter would be Bitty and Jack's dinner, but I want to explore some different CP pairings.
> 
> Please feel free to comment anything on your mind; I love everything from constructive criticism to chatting.


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